The Name Of The Doctor

Here's the secret: The Doctor's name is "Hu".

(No, not really.)
( Spoilers, sweetie. )

(Edit: By the way, for those unaware, the date Doctor Who returns, Nov. 23rd, is the 50th anniversary. There must be a party.)

Dinner With Neil & Amanda

The Brattle Theater, as part of its go-digital Kickstarter, offered drinks-snacks-and-two-movies with Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer as one of the reward levels. buxom_bey and I were lucky enough to be able to do that. And so, fanboy-dream ensued.

The pre-movie snackening was at Upstairs On The Square, which I hadn't been to since it was Upstairs At The Pudding. We arrived a bit late, and I said to the hostess, "We're with the Gaiman-Palmer party." And I checked getting to say that off my bucket list.

We were sharing the meal with a gentleman named Michael from Chicago, who was another Brattle supporter. (He's the guy in the hat in the photograph from two posts ago.) He was nice but quiet, and it was mostly Amanada and Bey dominating the conversation. Both Neil and Amanda are absolutely charming. I managed to put my foot in it about five minutes in when I mentioned that some people I know with a lot of social-media clout were interesting because they were freakin' nuts. Amanda raised her inked eyebrow at me and said, "Like me?" (As I dissolved into mortification she made it clear she was teasing me.)

We talked about Kickstarter, and Neil's Interworld books, and WorldCons past. sunspiral, he still considers the Hugo you made for him to be the prettiest he has. (Amanda considers it to be direly dildo-shaped, and wants to make porn with it.) I asked him if "Nightmare In Silver" and The Silver Dream coming out at the same time was a coincidence, and he said the timing was a coincidence, but the names are not. I got my copy of Sandman #1 autographed, and when I diffidently said I'd bought it new off the stands and had been a fan ever since, Neil seemed genuinely touched. And the food was delicious: designer pizzas, airy cheese puffs, bacon-wrapped dates, and the like.

We then walked over to the theater, where we had the front row of the balcony reserved. The two movies were films that Neil and Amanda picked out for each other to see. They were Drowning By Numbers (Neil's choice) a darkly comedic foreign film about a dysfunctional family of murderers, and Santa Sangre, a darkly comedic foreign film about a dysfunctional family of murderers. (Neil and Amanda are obviously perfect for each other.)

Afterwards we thanked Neil and Amanda for volunteering their time and drove home. Truly, a wonderful evening.